Here we go again ...

Technological advances have a peculiar way about them. They always seem to progress in steps of exponential growth followed by a period of lull. This trend is closely followed by our ability to learn new things about the world around us. And so human beings, particularly scientists, go through alternating periods of “discovery frenzy” and complacency that there’s nothing more left to explain. We had hit such a complacent period a few decades ago as regards origin and evolution of life on our planet. But now we’re in the “discovery frenzy” stage for the same and hence getting disillusioned about many theories and principles that we thought were invincible. Many new discoveries using newest and (so far) most accurate techniques are making it more than clear that the question of “how life originated on Earth?” is far from settled.

Nick Lane, the first Provost's Venture Research Fellow at University College London and author of Life Ascending: The ten great inventions of evolution, has written a detailed article in the New Scientist on 19th October, 2009 about an alternative theory for origin of life. This is only the latest one in the long line of many such that came before it but didn’t survive the scientific scrutiny. It is based on not-so-conventional ideas of Peter Mitchell who was initially dismissed by his contemporaries but won a Nobel in 1978. Geochemist Mike Russell of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California is rethinking the origin of life and finds Mitchell’s ‘Chemiosmosis’ a valid candidate. The following text from Lane’s article explains the idea,

Before Mitchell, everyone assumed that cells got their energy using straightforward chemistry. The universal energy currency of life is a molecule called ATP [...] generated from food by a series of standard chemical reactions. Mitchell thought otherwise. Life, he argued, is powered not by the kind of chemistry that goes on in a test tube but by a kind of electricity. The energy from food, [...] is used to pump [...] protons, through a membrane. As protons accumulate on one side, an electrochemical gradient builds up across the membrane. Given the chance, the protons will flow back across, releasing energy that can be harnessed to assemble ATP molecules. In energy terms, the process is analogous to filling a raised tank with buckets of water, then using the water to drive a waterwheel.

Even though this seems a counterintuitive and roundabout way to produce energy to power life, there is a growing body of evidence of this process occurring everywhere in nature. Aided with the latest knowledge of fellow biologists and using a logical process of elimination, author Lane reaches a baffling conclusion. The common ancestor of all life on Earth was something with components of a modern cell but no walls or boundaries. Now that’s a stunner! But nature has never failed to provide us evidence for the most unexpected and hence broaden the horizons of our knowledge. So along came the surprise discovery of alkaline hyrdrothermal vents just off the mid-Atlantic ridge in 2000. It turns out that the combination of their peculiar structure and the chemical conditions of atmosphere and ocean the on the early Earth provide a perfect toolkit for the production of DNA, RNA, an ATP prototype, all without the requirement for a wall or boundary. I have only given an outline of what Nick Lane’s article describes in a great detail. So if my summary makes you curious, go read the full article.

I’ll end this post with the apt ending Nick Lane provides to his article,

Many details have yet to be filled in, and it may never be possible to prove beyond any doubt that life evolved by this mechanism. The evidence, however, is growing. This scenario matches the known properties of all life on Earth, is energetically plausible - and returns Mitchell's great theory to its rightful place at the very centre of biology.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Human Evolution: Are Humans Still Evolving? - TIME (time.com)
• New Origin of Life Proposed: Zinc & Zap (space.com)
• Did Comet Crashes Help Spark Earth Life? (space.com)

Chemiosmotic Proton Circuits in Biological Membranes (In Honor of Peter Mitchell)

Anything we can do, nature can do

[Image source: Discover magazine 80 beats blog]

The 80 beats blog of the Discover magazine reports another one of those scenarios where our illusion of one-upmanship has been shattered by nature.

In chunks of rock quarried from a Russian mountain range, physicists have found perfect “quasicrystals,” a type of material that researchers previously thought could only be created in a lab. [...] Quasicrystals were first created in the lab in 1984, and physicist Paul Steinhardt, a coauthor of the current study, says the hunt for naturally occurring quasicrystals began about 10 years ago. [...] One of those samples was a mineral called khatyrkite that contained tiny grains of an alloy made of aluminium, copper, and iron, and which was found in the Koryak Mountains in Siberia. As researchers explain in their study, published in Science, the khatyrkite’s diffraction patterns almost exactly matched those of synthetic quasicrystals made in the lab.

Scientists are yet to understand the natural forces and processes behind formation of these crystals. Understanding these processes will help in synthesis of new materials.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Exotic Quasicrystal May Represent New Type of Mineral (scientificamerican.com)

TED Tuesday: Uncharted oceans

Ocean explorer Robert Ballard takes us on a mindbending trip to hidden worlds underwater, where he and other researchers are finding unexpected life, resources, even new mountains. He makes a case for serious exploration and mapping. Google Ocean, anyone?

Oldest surface on Earth

This is a quick post to share with my readers something that I found fascinating. An article in LiveScience by Robert Roy Britt on 5th May 2009 tells us,

A new study of ancient "desert pavement" in Israel's Negev Desert finds a vast region that's been sitting there exposed, pretty much as-is, for about 1.8 million years, according to Ari Matmon and colleagues at Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

I was trying to imagine how those scientists must have felt to stand on that desert pavement and realise that they were standing on the most primitve Earth we could find today. I don't know about them but I would find it very exhilerating!

Related articles by Zemanta

• Largest-ever collection of coins from Bar-Kokhba revolt found (scienceblog.com)
• Bustan Builds a Model of Desert Sustainability (treehugger.com)
• Ephraim Katzir, Former Israeli President, Dies at 93 (nytimes.com)

Sunday Spotlight: Mystery of the Sphinx

The documentary on YouTube:

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5

Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10

Author and lecturer, John Anthony West delivered a seismic shock to archaeology in the early 1990's when he and Boston University geologist Robert Schoch revealed that the Great Sphinx of Giza, Egypt, showed evidence of rainfall erosion. Such erosion could only mean that the Sphinx was carved during or before the rains that marked the transition of northern Africa from the last Ice Age to the present interglacial epoch, a transition that occurred in the millennia from 10,000 to 5000 BC. The Emmy award-winning documentary produced on this research, Mystery of the Sphinx, was released in 1993 and was a runaway success. I came across the same recently on YouTube and this blog entry is about some completely-radical-for-the-time facts that this documentary put forth and the active research that is still carried out regarding this theory today.

Few of the discoveries and contentions in the said documentary that I found particularly interesting and were very shocking to the archaeological community at the time are,

• The Sphinx was built before Egypt became a desert, which would be 9,000 to 10,000 years ago.
• All the monuments in Egypt show wind erosion except the Sphinx, the Sphinx enclosure and the temple, all of which show water erosion.
• The water erosion is not caused by the floods of the Nile but by constant and intense rainfall.
• The weathering is found beneath the granite repairs carried out, in the limestone from which the Sphinx is made. Thus it is not an erosion that has occurred in modern times.
• Based on this observation, the 9,000 to 10,000 years old age of Sphinx is confirmed by Palaeoarchaeology.
• The whole Sphinx was not carved out at the same time out of the limestone bedrock. The front of the Sphinx's body is older than the back.
• Zahi Hawwas and Mark Lehner, both prominent Egyptologists, confidently state that the face of the Sphinx matches well with that of the pharaoh Khafre (the alleged commissioner of the Sphinx). James Romano, Curator of the Egyptian collection, Brooklyn Museum, mentions that statues made by Egyptians showed the features of the person very accurately, including facial defects. However, Detective Frank Domingo of NYPD found that Sphinx did not portray pharaoh Khafre at all. It has, in fact, features of an African person, possibly female.
• Objects can be levitated using interfacing sound waves. In the region of interface, there are produced "sound wells" in which objects can be confined. The experiments at the time could only levitate small pebbles. (My note: For levitating huge stone blocks, the wavelength of the sound waves would have to be large and hence, frequency very low, i.e., infrasonic sound. Wikipedia gives some interesting facts about its effect of human behaviour, "Infrasound has been known to cause feelings of awe or fear in humans. Since it is not consciously perceived, it can make people feel vaguely that supernatural events are taking place.")
• The face of the Sphinx is not proportional to the rest of the body but much smaller. Since the rest of the body was covered with sand for most of its lifetime, the face could have been carved and re-carved (my note: without any sense of proportion of the rest) over the millennia.
• Pharaoh Khafre repaired the Sphinx, which was already ancient and degraded by his time, and did not commission its building.
• This theory could also point at existence of Atlantis civilisation, civilisation on Mars and its connection with Earth.

What I also found interesting in this documentary is that there are a few instances where the prominent personalities being interviewed exemplify the typical thinking of archaeologists. And that precisely shows why theories as revolutionary as that of John Anthony West and Dr. Schoch get the kind of unwelcoming response that they get. James Romano, Curator of the Egyptian collection, Brooklyn Museum, says at one point, ".....if we take the alternative view, see what we are stuck with.....". So because we would have to make the effort of rebuilding the whole castle, lets just deny that we stumbled upon its foundations! He goes on to make a statement which epitomises the fundamental on which we base all branches of research today, "Culture evolves in a linear fashion." This is something I personally do not agree with and I'm excited to find that John Anthony West also believes in the "cyclic form" of life.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Egypt Tourist Destinations (travelblissful.com)
• A meditation on loss and remembrance of things past (boston.com)
• Queen Nefertiti? (buzzfeed.com)

Sunday spotlight: The Land of No Horizon

A few months back I read the book 'The land of no horizon' (ISBN: 978-0-646-41057-9, 2001) written by Kevin J. Taylor and Matthew J. Taylor, a father and son team, who researched on this project for 12 years before authoring this very logical and greatly explanatory (with numerous simple illustrations) book. This book marries two controversial and now almost-discredited theories, 'expanding Earth' (vs. universally accepted theory of plate tectonics) and 'hollow Earth' (vs. the universally accepted inner core-outer core-mantle-crust model). These two theories have been shown to have severe flaws in them when considered by themselves. However, this book does a fantastic job of entwining these two theories to produce a logically sound hypothesis of "expanding hollow Earth" with its inner Sun. I am not a geologist to give an expert opinion on whether this hypothesis can be considered as a valid theory. However, as a scientist who thinks logically, most of the arguments, explanations and examples that are put forth in this book seem very plausible.

The authors don't just stop at proposing this new model for Earth's geology. What impressed me most about this book is the fact that using this theory, the authors have successfully (in my humble opinion) explained historical/mythical and scientific phenomena. They show us (through simple text and illustrations) how the imbalance between inner and out atmosphere and oceans would cause (and thus explain) the ancient, cataclysmic deluge mentioned in various religious texts that wiped out the mankind from the face of Earth. In fact, going back a step, they explain how the life on inside of the Earth would progress more rapidly than the outside and therefore, how WE could be the hybrid between primitive apes on the outside and intelligent beings on the inside. The name of the book is what the inside Earth would be, the land of no horizon! The authors also go on to explain (and are reasonably successful at) some astronomical observations such as the "red spot on Jupiter" with help of the same "expanding hollow planet" hypothesis applied to gas planets (like Jupiter, Saturn etc.).

The upside of the book is its simple, layman language and absence of unnecessary scientific and technological jargon. In addition, large number of simple and neat illustrations would make this book very readable and understandable to anyone who is able to think logically and ready to face unconventional, new ideas without prejudice. One downside of the book, I thought, was that it starts out in a fashion which leads you to believe its going to explain much more (e.g.: UFO observations) than it actually ends up doing. However, what it does explain is definitely significant.

The authors (following the new age trend) have started their own website to further promote and continue research on this topic. The website is very informative as well, with the blog having articles about earlier (and failed) hollow Earth theories, information about the authors, overview of the book, Expanding Earth animation etc. This is what the website has to say about the theory/book, "The Expanding Earth idea has been around for a long time, but science has not considered it worthy of genuine investigation because a driving force was missing. This is where the Hollow Earth theory comes in. A new understanding of Gravity gives rise to an expanding, hollow Earth and once and for all neatly solves the drifting continent phenomenon." All in all, whether it survives the serious scientific scrutiny in the end or not, the Expanding Hollow Earth theory is definitely something worth reading (and considering).

Related articles by Zemanta

• Five Successfully Proven Predictions of Creation Scientists (codybateman.org)
• Asteroid Impact Craters on Earth, Seen From Space (wired.com)
• First complete image created of Himalayan fault, subduction zone (scienceblog.com)

Future is here

Like many other countries that use nuclear power, the US does not recycle its nuclear waste. Yucca Mountains in Nevada is chosen to be the national repository of all the nuclear waste produced. It is estimated that this waste will remain hazardously radioactive for about 10K years. Hence it is essential to have a system in place to warn all the future human generations and any other possible intelligent species that would roam the Earth in next 10K years of the imminent dangers of the repository being disturbed. As the Office of civilian radioactive waste management (OCRWM) website mentions, “The [Nuclear Regulatory Commission] NRC requires that the monuments or markers “accurately identify the location of the repository, be designed to be as permanent as practicable and convey a warning against intrusion into the underground repository, because of risk to public health and safety from radioactive wastes.” It goes on to say, however, “ ..... but the designs will not be final for some time because they will not be approved by the NRC until shortly before the repository is to be permanently sealed and closed.”, which could another 50 to 300 years.

However, in 2002, the Desert Space Foundation held an exhibition called ‘Universal warning sign: Yucca Mountain’, which comprised of winning designs in a variety of media that engage the challenge of creating an effective universal warning sign/permanent marker for the proposed high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mt., Nevada. How does one communicate with earthlings (yes, I’m not just saying humans) from the future? Sounds like a question from a sci-fi novel, doesn’t it? But that’s exactly what all the participants in this challenge had to think about. Even though this challenge and exhibition were held about 7 years ago, I still find the concept relevant today and for a long time to come. If we think of this question in a general context, I’m sure it will be a very intriguing thought process. Would they understand our script and language? Probably not! Would even the symbols we use for radioactive, biohazard or any other concept have the same significance after all these years? Who knows!

Some of the entries to this challenge were very creative, some peculiar (why UFO?) and some which curiously made me think of all the cosmically aligned ancient megaliths around the world! While most entries focused on driving people away from the site by inducing fear and uneasiness, only one design (*thinking megaliths*) tried to educate the people who would visit the site of the dangers. Once again, as I said before, I feel this challenge and the entries for it are much thought provoking for humans of any era. Because future is always staring us in the face.

Related articles by Zemanta

• US's Yucca Mountain nuclear project in meltdown (telegraph.co.uk)
• After Yucca Mountain: How to store US nuclear waste (arstechnica.com)
• Senate Passes Bill to Close Yucca Mountain (cbsnews.com)

Sunday Spotlight: Extreme Ice Survey (EIS)

The recent Wilkins ice shelf collapse has provided us with one more danger signal that the global warming is for real. And more and more scientific studies are point towards the disturbing (at least it should be) possibility that IT IS already too late for us to stop the climate change. It is well and truly underway and all we can try to do is lessen its impact by slowing down its devastating march. The Earth is predicted to be in the middle of sixth mass extinction. So while we’re trying to get our act together in slowing down the climate change, it is also a good idea to try and record the ecology as it is today. Because after 20 to 30 years, many of its features will be extinct, such as various species or ecosystems. Extreme ice survey (EIS) is one such attempt at painstakingly recording the ice-features of the world before they start vanishing like the Wilkins ice shelf.

EIS describes itself as “the most wide-ranging glacier study ever conducted using ground-based, real-time photography. EIS uses time-lapse photography, conventional photography, and video to document the rapid changes now occurring on the Earth's glacial ice. The EIS team has installed 27 time-lapse cameras at 15 sites in Greenland, Iceland, Alaska, and the Rocky Mountains. EIS supplements this ongoing record with annual repeat photography in Iceland, the Alps, and Bolivia.” The originator of this idea and project, James Balog, is an internationally acclaimed nature photojournalist and a mountaineer with a graduate degree in geomorphology. In 2006, while shooting for a cover story for National Geographic, Balog recognised that the features that took centuries to develop were being destroyed in just a few years or even just a few weeks. These changes were the most visually dramatic and immediate manifestations of climate change on our planet today.

The project was started with the aim of recording the movements, birth and demise of these magnificent white, glittery landscapes across the planet. The website showcases some fabulous videos, photographs and time-lapses that are a result of meticulous efforts of the EIS team. The website also gives some interesting information about glaciology and climate change that any visitor will find useful. But it doesn’t just stop at telling you how the glaciers form but it goes on to tell you what you can do to stop them from disappearing so fast.It is definitely a website and a project that is worth a look and think, a commendable effort on behalf of humanity to preserve the images of the present which might be lost forever to our future generations.

Related articles by Zemanta

• As its Glaciers Melt, Greenland on Track to Emit 10 Million Tons of CO2 a Year (treehugger.com)
• Time-Lapse Videos Of Extreme Ice Loss Show Vivid Evidence Of Climate Change (VIDEO) (huffingtonpost.com)
• Study warns of cataclysmic melting of glaciers (canada.com)

Lightening in a volcano

[Image source: LiveScience]

Yes, this is what Andrea Thompson, Senior Writer at LiveScience, reports about in an interesting article on their website. I learnt something new today, that lightening happens inside a volcano plume, didn't know that!

For the first time, scientists have been able to “see” and trace lightning inside a plume of ash spewing from an actively erupting volcano. Physicist Paul Krehbiel of New Mexico Tech., who observed and studied these lightening flashes, said, "The lightning activity was as strong or stronger than we have seen in large Midwestern thunderstorms."

A recent study in the journal Nature found that volcanic plumes spin like tornadic thunderstorms, a finding which helps to explain the lightning storms, as well as the waterspouts and dust devils produced by some volcanic plumes. For more, follow the link above.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Bolts that come `out of the blue' (thestar.com)
• Longest Lightning Storm: Saturn Sets Record (space.com)
• Lightning Detected on Mars (space.com)

The ancient nuclear reactors

[Source: http://www.phys.ncku.edu.tw/]

In 1953 George W. Wetherill of the University of California at Los Angeles and Mark G. Inghram of the University of Chicago pointed out that some uranium (U) deposits might have once operated as natural versions of the nuclear fission reactors. Shortly thereafter, Paul K. Kuroda, a chemist from the University of Arkansas, calculated what it would take for a uranium ore body spontaneously to undergo self-sustained fission. The size of the uranium deposit should exceed two thirds of a meter, the average length that fission-inducing neutrons travel. Also, U-235 must be present in sufficient abundance approximately 3%.

The Oklo Fossil Fission Reactors, various separate areas within the Oklo and adjacent Okelobondo uranium mines, is one of the most fascinating stories in the relatively short history of science and especially in the even shorter history of Nuclear Physics. In 1972 the very well preserved remains of several ancient natural nuclear reactors were discovered in the middle of the Oklo Uranium ore deposit. Since their discovery the Oklo reactors have been studied by many scientists around the world. Two billion years ago (about when the Oklo deposit formed) U-235 must have constituted about 3% of these deposites, which is roughly the level provided artificially in the enriched uranium used to fuel most nuclear power stations. But only recently did Prof. Alex Meshik and his colleagues from Washington University, MO, USA finally clarify major details of what exactly went on inside one of those ancient reactors. Their article originally appeared in the October 2005 issue of Scientific American.

The basic idea that natural fission reactions were responsible for the depletion in U-235 at Oklo was accepted by scientists quite soon after the anomalous uranium was discovered. The high abundance of lighter elements created via fission proved an indisputable evidence for the same. Some of the neutrons released during the fission of U-235 were captured by the more abundant U-238 to produce U-239 which, after undergoing two beta decays, turned into plutonium (Pu)-239. More than two tons of this Pu isotope were generated within the Oklo deposit, most of which has decayed away over time.

It is truly amazing that more than a dozen natural reactors spontaneously sprang into existence and that they managed to maintain a modest power output for perhaps a few hundred millennia. Why did these “reactor cores” not explode right after nuclear chain reactions began? What was their self-regulating mechanism? Did these reactors run continuously or intermittently? The solutions of many puzzling aspects of these reactors came by only slowly over next few decades. The recent work by Prof. Alex Meshik and colleagues centred on an analysis of xenon (Xe), an inert gas product of fission, to find out what exactly went on inside these reactors. A couple of surprising results lead to deeper thinking about the mechanism and circumstances involved. The majority of Xe was not located in uranium-rich mineral grains but was mainly trapped in aluminum phosphate minerals, which contain no uranium at all. The second epiphany was the significantly different isotopic makeup of extracted gas as compared to that usually produced in nuclear reactors. The deeper analysis and contemplation revealed that the Xe isotopes measured resulted from decay of radioactive daughter products and not directly from U fission. Also, a key insight gained was that different xenon isotopes were created at different times depending on the half-lives of the parents and grandparents.

The Oklo reactors regulated themselves, most likely, through use of groundwater. Due to ongoing nuclear chain reaction, the temperature of the deposit would go on increasing over time. Once a critical temperature was reached, the water presumably boiled away. Without water present to act as a neutron moderator, the chain reaction would have temporarily ceased. Only after things cooled off and sufficient groundwater once again permeated the zone of reaction could fission resume. Large quantities of water must have been moving through these rocks, enough to wash away some of the xenon, tellurium and iodine, which are water-soluble. The attempted to model the process mathematically revealed much about the timing of reactor operation. The Oklo reactor would have switched “on” for 30 minutes and “off” for at least 2.5 hours.A similar zone of ancient nuclear fission was found in Bangombe, located some 35 kilometers away from Oklo. The Bangombe reactor is of special interest because it was more shallowly buried and thus has had more water moving through it in recent times. These ancient natural reactors could prove good models for studying the movement of nuclear waste from repositories. They may also teach scientists about possible shifts in what was formerly thought to be a fundamental physical constant, alpha, which controls such universal quantities as the speed of light.

Related articles by Zemanta

• A Lunar Nuclear Reactor (technologyreview.com)
• If Reid, Obama Kill Yucca Mountain, Where Will Nuclear Waste Go? Think Fusion (usnews.com)
• Nuclear Reactors In Space (lockergnome.com)

Trying to be friends of Earth

Since I'm on about being environment friendly these days, I thought I'd share some more online articles I found about people around the world inventing eco-friendly energy options, materials etc. The source of these info-snippets is Graham Hancock’s website and I’m not really going to do much of my own writing in this one but just “share” the info with you. If you are interested in further details, like me, I’ll provide the appropriate links and leave the effort to click on it to you. I would only like to say that it make me glad to come across such news because then I do not feel like a complete slacker as a member of the human race!

Air New Zealand tests Jet fuel made from poisonous Jatropha seeds.
Biodegradable plastic made from plants, not oil, is emerging.
How underground ‘hot rocks’ could power America’s future.

A Willy Wonka who wants to feed the world.

Giant microwave turns plastic back to oil.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Jet Biofuel Ready for Takeoff (scientificamerican.com)
• Renewable energy: markets recover and jatropha goes north (energyrefuge.com)
• Boeing and Industry Study Shows Biofuels Perform Effectively as Jet Fuel (planegrazy.com)

New Scientist links

I am finding too many interesting articles, photo galleries and stories today to write a blog entry about each one! So I figured I'd just share the links with you all and then you can do the reading yourself :). So here goes,

Seven new wonders of the world,
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16323-seven-new-wonders-of-the-world.html

The year's weirdest animals,
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16320-the-years-weirdest-animals.html

Gallery: Most stunning images of 2008
http://www.newscientist.com/gallery/dn16286-best-images-of-2008

Be enlightened!

Cave of crystals: nature's wonder

Until you notice the orange-suited men clambering around, it's hard to grasp the extraordinary scale of this underground crystal forest. [Courtesy: MailOnline]

"Nearly 1,000ft below the Chihuahua Desert in Mexico, this cave was discovered by two brothers drilling in the Naica lead and silver mine. It is an eerie sight.

Up to 170 giant, luminous obelisks - the biggest is 37.4ft long and the equivalent height of six men - jut across the grotto like tangled pillars of light; and the damp rock of their walls is covered with yet more flawless clusters of blade-sharp crystal."

For more on this interesting story, follow the link.